Coal miners used to carry canaries with them down into the mines as a sort of warning device of bad air quality. Because canaries are so much smaller than humans, they would die from breathing the toxic air way before the miners were in any danger. That served as inspiration for artist “Marei Wollesrsberger”:http://marei.co.uk/ whose “BioSafe Habitat”:http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009608.php concept involves aquatic plants or fish serving the canaries sacrificial function. In reading about the project, I discovered a fascinating (and patented) species of fish called “GloFish”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GloFish. These modified zebrafish literally glow when exposed to water contaminants. They’re also the only genetically modified organism to be legally sold as a pet.

After years of stealing eggs from the neighbors Carlos and Fernando, the only gay flamingo couple at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Gloucestershire, England, have a chick of the their own. The newly-hatched flamingling was abandoned by its biological parents and so was a logical choice for the gay flamingo couple who have been together for 6 years. I know this sounds like anthropomorphizing, but homosexuality has been observed in a number of species, including penguins, humans, sheep, dolphins, orangutans, beetles, bats and humans. Here’s a picture of the new family, for a larger version and the full story you can read “The Daily Mail”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=456716&in_page_id=1770.

Only one in ten-thousand hedgehogs are born truly albino, with red eyes and completely white skin. Because of the rarity of it, and because it’s so darn cute in a creepy “I could steal your soul” kind of way, here it is.

This short French documentary on life in the abyss of deep ocean waters starts by saying “these are not aliens.” The disclaimer is a helpful one as you go on to watch translucent squid, writhing luminescent worms, and a a flan-like creature the narrators call a dumbo octopus. The animals shown in this video are no less than incredible, and it’s amazing that they live on the same planet that we do.

So it’s no secret. He does. Not only does he look like a monkey, but sometimes he probably smells like one too, although I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been that close to him. To celebrate his looking a bit more simian than the rest of us, I’m glad that the internet has produced “bushorchimp.com”:http://www.bushorchimp.com/ in which pictures of President Bush are put right next to pictures of chimpanzees. Almost 5 million people have visited since the site went up in 2000, join them. Here are some of my favorites:

The unending urban sprawl emanating from New York City has caused a different kind of migration. According to this “article”:http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006225.html from “Word Changing blog”:http://www.worldchanging.com/ wildlife has been leaving the ecological desert of suburbia for the next best thing. That turns out to be the parks and waterways of New York City. Recent urban jungle sightings include hawks, falcons, coyotes, and beavers. Yes, there are beavers in Brooklyn.

Evolution happens. Whether it’s a dog breed artificially selected to be long and hot dog-like or a group of people adapting an economic system that seemed to have worked for their more prosperous neighbors, things evolve. As yet another example of primate intelligence and social evolution happening right out in nature, Senegalese chimps have been seen using spears to hunt bushbabies. This report comes as complete hearsay with absolutely no evidence but it’s still so damned exciting I just had to share it. Apparently the full story will be published in the next issue of “Current Biology”:http://www.current-biology.com/ but here’s a “synopsis”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387611.stm from our friends at the BBC.